The Big Dick

The Big Dick

We have had quite a week. On Wednesday evening two vehicles parked outside
our home with about 8 men in them. We are always on the watch for this sort
of thing - it could be the Police, or politically motivated thugs or simply
thieves. For this reason we have a night guard on duty from 6 to 6.

When these men were still there at 20.00 hrs I called the armed reaction
unit of a security company and they arrived in 15 minutes or so. They
questioned the group and were told that they were "police". At 18.30 hrs our
neighbors had fired a warning shot to persuade the group to move but they
had only shifted their locale to a spot closer to us. I therefore thought it
unlikely that they were "police".

At 22.00 hrs I called the Police and they arrived in strength (about 12 men)
at 23.30 hrs. They also spoke to the group and then came to see me. They
took statements from our staff and myself and then after looking around they
left, leaving two uniformed officers on duty at the house - I was mystified!
Who were these guys and what were they doing? The Police had given me no
clue.

Three of the group had tried to enter our property and were duly chased over
the back fence by our night guard and gardener. I told the Police this and
also about the shot and again no reaction at all! I was perplexed and went
back to bed. At 04.30 the Police details on duty at the house went off and
at 06.00 hrs the last of the strange vehicles outside the house for the past
12 hours also drove away.

We went about our work - another Police vehicle arrived and dropped two
plain clothes officers off at the house. We later fed them lunch and tea.
Still no clue as to what was going on. At lunchtime I dispatched a truck to
a business of ours with a load and we packed up and left for a family
wedding in Johannesburg.

At the border that evening I received a call. Did I know that the Mutambara
group had issued a statement saying I was hiding 5 men wanted by the Police
for the attack on Trudy Stevenson the previous Sunday? I said no. The person
then read out what they had said. It was quite serious - the statement
claimed I was hiding 5 men on the run from the Police after the attack and
that I was going to help them cross the border into South Africa illegally.

I laughed and said that this explained all the fuss at home the night before
and during the day! Well, the Police kept a detail at the house for four
days and then withdrew when it was apparent that I had no idea what they
were looking for and no strangers had come anywhere near the house.

I came home on Tuesday after a day in Johannesburg on business after the
wedding and all was back to normal. It now transpires that the mystery group
outside my house was made up of Mutambara group people including one of
their National Executive whom I know well - he had a long cold night for
nothing!

What made me laugh however was some of the e-mail responses to this
ludicrous press statement. One guy said to the Press Secretary "if you want
to piss all over someone, at least take your dick out of your pants before
you do it!" Not my sort of language, but it certainly expresses the
situation well.

Since then the Police claim to have arrested 8 men responsible for the
attack on Trudy and have also arrested a MDC Member of Parliament; Timothy
Mubawu, on suspicion of being involved. Quite frankly I doubt the latter
allegation, as he knows all too well that he would face the wrath of the
Party for any such activity as well as a long prison sentence, but we wait
to see what will eventually transpire.

The MDC has of course been blamed for the whole thing - that was after all,
the objective of the exercise. The choice of Trudy was also quite
deliberate - she is one of the few white women involved and is well known
and respected. An attack on a black person in similar circumstances would
not gain anything like the publicity and attention of this sort of attack.
In fact the Chairperson of our Women's Assembly, Lucy Mativenga, was
attacked a short while ago in Gwanda, had injuries similar to those of Trudy
and could not walk for some weeks afterwards. This attack, perpetrated on an
ethnic basis, hardly attracted any attention.

The question arises then as to who is carrying out these attacks, who puts
up the money and the planning and why? It is certainly not the MDC. We are,
always have been and will remain, totally opposed to any form of violence to
achieve our goals.

The State on the other hand has every reason to carry out such attacks and
they have lots of resources to make it happen and to then subsequently put
the appropriate spin on the outcome. The motivation has been to foster any
ethnic divide there exists, to foster any political divide that may exist -
lots of raw material for both in a country like Zimbabwe. Then there is also
the added attraction of being able to blame the MDC for the violence and to
take the position that we are no different to Zanu PF which clearly has no
compunction about claiming to be a Party that espouses violence in all its
forms and who will use violence to maintain its grip on power.

So my money is on the CIO and Zanu PF as the perpetrators of this so called
"intra Party violence". If you examine the record carefully you can see a
pattern emerge and it is also clear from the sporadic nature of these
attacks that they are deliberate and well planned.

The question is how to react? I was very happy with the attitude of the
Police in my own case - they were polite and considerate and when it became
clear that we were not in any way involved as our big dick had claimed, they
left us to get on with our normal lives. Clearly we must be clean ourselves
and we simply must ensure a zero tolerance for violence - even when we are
engaged in mass action.

But the one thing we must NOT do - is respond as expected and lay blame on
the "other Party" for the violence when it happens. This is exactly what the
Mutambara group has done since last Sunday culminating in the silly Press
Statement about my own involvement. I am still paying for the injuries
inflicted on a young MDC supporter by a group of thugs at a rally here in
Bulawayo - he lost an eye. But we have not blamed anyone for this - that is
the way it should be.

Eddie Cross
Bulawayo, 12th July 2006



"Robert Kay" <robertkay@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1152727286.553022@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<ade69@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1152583080.998471.16570@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

leopard@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
leopard@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
on sunday trudy was nearly murdered by rivals supporting the morgan
tsvangerai mdc faction. looks like the the western backed mdc is
falling apart. get well soon trudy. great news ,8 of
the tsvangirai mdc thugs have been arrested.
I THINK THEY'VE GOT 9 OF 'EM NOW.


MP held for attack on Harare lawmaker

Harare - Police arrested an opposition parliamentarian in connection with
an
attack on Zimbabwe's only white
female MP, state television reported late on Monday. Timothy Mubawu, an MP
of the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) for the Tafara and Mabvuku townships, handed himself in to
police earlier in the day after police
said they were looking for him. Trudy Stevenson, a member of a breakaway
faction of the MDC, was attacked
last week and left with a deep gash to her head, a broken arm and a
fractured cheek bone. The attack on
Stevenson, Zimbabwe's only white female MP, has been deeply damaging to
Zimbabwe's opposition, especially the
MDC faction led by former trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai, of which
Mubawu
is also a part. Up to nine other
MDC members have so far been arrested as police widened their probe into
the
attack.

Stevenson says youths belonging to Tsvangirai's faction of the party
assaulted her with stones and a machete on July 2 after she and several
colleagues held a meeting in Mabvuku. Stevenson left the Tsvangirai-led MD
C
faction
late last year, joining a faction of the party now led by firebrand former
student activist Arthur Mutambara.

According to Monday's edition of the state-controlled Herald newspaper,
Stevenson's attackers escaped in a
pick-up truck that belongs to Mubawu. The ruling party of President Robert
Mugabe, which is often itself accused
of human rights violations, says the incident proves the MDC has always
been
a violent party. But Tsvangirai's
faction says the ruling party and others are trying to make political
capital out of this unfortunate event. The
group has promised an independent inquiry into the incident.





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